2025 Employee Engagement: What Leaders Must Know from the Latest Global Insights
The State of the Global Workplace in 2025
Gallup’s newly released State of the Global Workplace 2025 report reveals a concerning trend: only 21% of employees worldwide are engaged at work, a drop from 23% in 2023. This disengagement represents an estimated $438 billion in lost productivity.
Key Stats:
62% of employees are “not engaged”
17% are actively disengaged
Only 33% of employees globally are “thriving” in life
Why Are Employees Disengaged? The Manager Factor
This visual from T2 illustrates the real impact of disengaged managers—demonstrating how poor leadership cascades into team disengagement, reduced performance, and increased turnover. A call to action for organisations to invest in leadership development.
According to Gallup, 70% of a team’s engagement is driven by their manager. That makes manager engagement a core factor in team performance.
But here’s the problem:
Manager engagement dropped from 30% to 27%
Young managers (under 35) and female managers saw the steepest drops
Only 44% of managers globally have received formal training
Wellbeing and Work Are Deeply Connected
Gallup’s data shows that employees who are engaged at work are also more likely to thrive in life—and less likely to feel stress, loneliness, and burnout.
📉 Only 33% of employees are thriving globally
📈 But among engaged employees, that number jumps to over 50%.
What High-Performing Organisations Do Differently
Top organizations that report 70%+ engagement all share three traits:
They train managers to lead, not just manage
They encourage coaching over commanding
They prioritize wellbeing alongside productivity
What T2 Is Doing to Lead the Change
At T2, we turn insights into action. In just a few days, we’re hosting our T2 Leadership Retreat, where senior leaders from forward-thinking companies will:
Build modern leadership mindsets
Learn practical coaching strategies
Align leadership with wellbeing and performance
This is how we support the people of today, leaders of tomorrow, and organisations of the future.
Want to Stay Ahead of Workplace Change?
Leadership starts now.
At T2, we’re committed to helping leaders and organisations thrive in today’s evolving work environment.
Our approach is grounded in the T2 6 Pillars of Leadership — a proven framework designed to unlock performance, wellbeing, and meaningful growth.